This is a chef-provisioning provisioner for VMware vSphere.

chef-provisioning-vsphere supports provisioning Unix/ssh and Windows/winrm guest VMs.

A vcenter and valid login credentials.

A VM template capable of installing Chef 11.8 or newer. This can be either windows or linux flavored.

An environment equipped with the chef client and the chef-provisioning-vsphere gem.

This is a minimal machine definition that will use a dhcp assigned ip (it assumes the presense of a dhcp server). For test purposes this uses a linked clone for a faster provisioning time. This recipe should be used with a linux template. Windows provisioned servers need to point to a chef server for the cookbooks since winrm does not support port forwarding and there fore cannot reach back on the chef-zero port to get the local cookbooks. See examples below.

chef_gem 'chef-provisioning-vsphere' do
  action :install
  compile_time true
end

require 'chef/provisioning/vsphere_driver'

with_vsphere_driver host: 'vcenter-host-name',
  insecure: true,
  user:     'you_user_name',
  password: 'your_mothers_maiden_name'

with_machine_options :bootstrap_options => {
  use_linked_clone: true,
  num_cpus: 2,
  memory_mb: 4096,
  network_name: ["vlan_20_172.21.20"],
  datacenter: 'datacenter_name',
  resource_pool: 'cluster',
  template_name: 'path to template',
  customization_spec: {
    ipsettings: {
      dnsServerList: ['1.2.3.31','1.2.3.41']
    },
    :domain => 'local'
  }
  :ssh => {
    :user => 'root',
    :password => 'password',
    :paranoid => false,
  }
}

machine "my_machine_name" do
  run_list ['my_cookbook::default']
end

chef-client -z -o 'my_cookbook::provision'

This will use chef-zero and needs no chef server (only works for ssh). Note that chef-zero does not support berkshelf style cookbook dependency resolution. So this works if the cookbook in the machine's runlist has no external dependencies. If it needs to reach out to supermarket or another berkshelf API server, perform a berks vendor to pull down the dependencies first.

• [:use_linked_clone] - (true/false) great for testing but not recommended for production.
• [:datacenter] - Name of vsphere datacenter (required)
• [:template_name] - path to vmware template (can be template or a shutown vm) (required)
• [:template_folder] - path to a folder containing the template (do not use if template is in the root vm folder)
• [:vm_folder] - path to a folder where the machine will be created.
• [:datastore] - name of datastore to use
• [:num_cpus] - number of cpus to allocate to machine
• [:network_name] - array of network names to use. A NIC will be added for each
• [:memory_mb] - number of megabytes to allocate for machine
• [:host] - {cluster}/{host} to use during provisioning
• [:resource_pool] - {cluster}/{resource pool} to use during provisioning
• [:additional_disk_size_gb] - an array of numbers, each signifying the number of gigabytes to assign to an additional disk (this requires a datastore to be specified)
• [:ssh][:user] user to use for ssh/winrm (defaults to root on linux/administrator on windows)
• [:ssh][:password] - password to use for ssh/winrm
• [:ssh][:paranoid] - specifies the strictness of the host key verification checking
• [:ssh][:port] port to use for ssh/winrm (defaults to 22 for ssh or 5985 for winrm)
• [:convergence_options][:install_msi_url] - url to chef client msi to use (defaults to latest)
• [:convergence_options][:install_sh_url] - the bash script to install chef client on linux (defaults to latest)
• [:customization_spec][:ipsettings][:ip] static ip to assign to machine
• [:customization_spec][:ipsettings][:subnetMask] - subnet to use
• [:customization_spec][:ipsettings][:gateway] - array of possible gateways to use (this will most often be an array of 1)
• [:customization_spec][:ipsettings][:dnsServerList] - array of DNS servers to use
• [:customization_spec][:domain] - domain to use (if not 'local' on a windows machine it will attempt to domain join)
• [:customization_spec][:domainAdmin] - domain admin account to use for domain join on windows (should be {user name}@{domain})
• [:customization_spec][:domainAdminPassword] - domain administrator password
• [:customization_spec][:hostname] - hostname to use. Defaults to machine resource name if not provided
• [:customization_spec][:org_name] - org name used in sysprep on windows
• [:customization_spec][:product_id] - windows product key
• [:customization_spec][:run_once] - Array of commands for vSphere to run at the end of windows bootstrapping
• [:customization_spec][:time_zone] - The case-sensitive timezone, such as Europe/Sofia based on the tz (timezone) database used by Linux and other Unix systems
• [:customization_spec][:winrm_transport] - winrm transport to use. Defaults to negotiate
• [:customization_spec][:win_time_zone] - numeric time zone for windows
• [:customization_spec][:winrm_opts] - Optional hash of winrm options (e.g. disable_sspi: true)

These are settings set at the root of machine_options. Chances are the defaults for these settings do not need to be changed:

• start_timeout - number of seconds to wait for a machine to be accessible after a restart (default 10 minutes)
• create_timeout - number of seconds to wait for a machine to be accessible after initiating provisioning (default 10 minutes)
• ready_timeout - number of seconds to wait for customization to complete and vmware tools to come on line (default 5 minutes)

with_machine_options :bootstrap_options => {
  use_linked_clone: true,
  num_cpus: 2,
  memory_mb: 4096,
  network_name: ["vlan_20_172.21.20"],
  datacenter: 'datacenter_name',
  resource_pool: 'cluster',
  template_name: 'path to template',
  datastore: "my_data_store",
  additional_disk_size_gb: [50,20],
  customization_spec: {
    ipsettings: {
      ip: '192.168.3.4',
      subnetMask: '255.255.255.0',
      gateway: ["192.168.3.1"],
      dnsServerList: ['1.2.3.31','1.2.3.41']
    },
    :domain => 'local'
  }
  :ssh => {
    :user => 'root',
    :password => 'password',
    :paranoid => false,
  }
}

with_machine_options :bootstrap_options => {
  use_linked_clone: true,
  num_cpus: 2,
  memory_mb: 4096,
  network_name: ['vlan_20_172.21.20'],
  datacenter: 'datacenter_name',
  resource_pool: 'cluster',
  template_name: 'path to template',
  customization_spec: {
    ipsettings: {
      dnsServerList: ['1.2.3.31','1.2.3.41']
    },
    domain: 'blah.com',
    domainAdmin: 'administrator@blah.com',
    domainAdminPassword: 'Passwordyoyoyo',
    org_name: 'acme',
    product_id: 'CDAA-87DC-3455-FF77-2AAC',
    win_time_zone: 4
  }
  ssh: {
    user: 'administrator',
    password: 'password',
    paranoid: false,
  }
},
:convergence_options => {
  :ssl_verify_mode => :verify_none
}

Note: You must run chef-client against a server for a windows box. You can do this locally since the provisioning recipe should not change the state of the provisioner. You will need to upload the cookbook (both the one doing the provisioning and the one used in the provisioned machine's runlist) before running chef-client.

knife cookbook upload my_cookbook
chef-client -o 'my_cookbook::provision' -c .chef/knife.rb

chef_gem 'chef-provisioning-vsphere' do
  action :install
  compile_time true
end

require 'chef/provisioning/vsphere_driver'

with_vsphere_driver host: 'vcenter-host-name',
  insecure: true,
  user:     'you_user_name',
  password: 'your_mothers_maiden_name'

with_machine_options :bootstrap_options => {
  use_linked_clone: true,
  num_cpus: 2,
  memory_mb: 4096,
  network_name: ["vlan_20_172.21.20"],
  datacenter: 'datacenter_name',
  resource_pool: 'cluster',
  template_name: 'path to template',
  customization_spec: {
    ipsettings: {
      dnsServerList: ['1.2.3.31','1.2.3.41']
    },
    :domain => 'local'
  }
  :ssh => {
    :user => 'root',
    :password => 'password',
    :paranoid => false,
  }
},
:sudo => true

machine "my_machine_name" do
  run_list ['my_cookbook::default']
end

This chef-provisioning-driver comes with a test-kitchen driver. Here are example driver options you can add to your kitchen.yml.

driver:
  name: vsphere
  driver_options:
    host: '1.2.3.5'
    user: 'user'
    password: 'pass'
    insecure: true
  machine_options:
    start_timeout: 600
    create_timeout: 600
    ready_timeout: 90
    bootstrap_options:
      use_linked_clone: true
      datacenter: 'DC'
      template_name: 'UBUNTU1264'
      vm_folder: 'TEST'
      num_cpus: 2,
      network_name:
        - vlan_20_1.2.3.4
      memory_mb: 4096
      resource_pool: 'CLSTR/TEST'
      ssh:
        user: root
        paranoid: false
        password: password
        port: 22
      convergence_options:
      customization_spec:
        domain: local
        ipsettings:
          dnsServerList:
            - 8.8.8.8
            - 8.8.4.4

We took care to make this driver as generic as possible but there wll certainly be implementation nuances that may not work for everyone. We are happy to accept contributions to improve the driver and make it more accessible to a broader set of use cases.